members in the inner city. sweeping the streets instead of peoplpe?hugging on le? guest: a a broad group of having a minimum wage think it is a good idea. speaker banner did not support raising the minimum wage but president bush signed -- speaker boehner did not support raising the minimum wage. there is something to the idea that people bristle coming in between an employer and employee even though there are lots of ways the government does that. the moderate increase they're proposing to $9 an hour. a lot of states would not get hit by that because there minimum wages are already higher. host: what is it in new york city or the big cities, the cost of living is higher? guest: san francisco has a higher minimum wage and the same thing with new york but i do not know the exact numbers. host: you mentioned $7.25, where it is right now. what would it be if it kept up with inflation? guest: it reached its highest and 197'she 1960's and would have been something like $10 in today's dollars. it has never gone back to those heights, adjusting for inflation. host: we have this on twitter

manufacturing plant in delaware. -- guest: i visited a city with a manufacturing plant in delaware. the hot hot -- india is the third fastest-growing source of investment in the united states. as long as they are doing that, but like delaware to get their share. i have had a lot of meetings around that issue. it was encouraging trip. people talk about globalization, but it is real. it is here. whether it is india or a company from south korean the thought a poultry farm -- this is the real world we live in. we are opening up 20 immersion schools where students spend half of their school day learning in a different language. we have 340 kindergarten and first grade students who are learning science, social studies, and mass in either chinese or spanish. in 15 or 20 years, it will make a difference. in a global world, and have to make sure we have a workforce that can communicate in languages other than english. host: from delaware, this is lands on our republican line. -- lance on our republican line. caller: you have proposed gun legislation in delaware, which would require law-abiding citi

of talk about obama coming to the funeral or chicago to address the issue of violence in the city being that it is his hometown. there have been about 560 murders here since the last year. 60 this year already. he is coming on friday. he had to go through a lot of flack. radio stations have called him out on it. it is good to see that when you raise your voice, it affects things. her parents were there. he addressed the situation. that was good. host: the president is traveling to chicago to talk about gun violence. he will travel to north carolina to talk about the ideas on manufacturing last night and the state of the union address. look for our coverage at www.c- span.org. tom cole from oklahoma joins us. he sits on the budget committee. he is an appropriator. let us begin with what the president said about the automatic spending cuts that go into place march 1 unless a deal comes up. he said there has to be new revenue and calls for closing loopholes. do you agree? guest: the president has not put forward a plan. he had known this was coming for two years. the house plan -- passed l

believe it is 4.5 million people who can see it on various cable networks in some of the larger cities and then some smaller independent operators in smaller cities. a good part of the traffic has been people who streamed it online. that is a pretty dedicated following. in fact, with the very large online content and was determined 40% comes from the united states. host: an appetite. guest: there is an appetite clearly. how much will translate toward cable channels again -- some of these folks dedicated online streamers -- that is a challenge. but we hope we can provide interesting content and sort of have some people cross over. host: al jazeera purchased current tv in december of last year. how will that expand the american audience? who will you be able to reach now? guest: potentially estimated 50 million viewers. if you talk, 4.5 million homes to 50 million homes, a great leap for us and a great deal. one of the things we thought for years and distribution in the americas. this opens some eyeballs to us, and we hope it gives people a chance to see our coverage, to sample it for those

take cities like this and put money back into the economy. host: i think we got the point. let's get an answer from representative engel. guest: first of all, thanks for the working-class connection. my dad was a welder. he was an iron worker. a very proud member of the ironworkers union. i grew up with those kinds of feelings, caring about working people in this country. the statistics seem to be going in that direction with unemployment going down and joblessness going down as well. you make a very good point. the problem with our participation is that you really do not know whether you are going to go out of the frying pan into the fire. there are reports, for instance, that the administration was struggling, months ago, overworked -- over whether we should intervene in syria and support the rebels. again, the two schools of thought are, you want to support the rebels because assad, let's say, is not a good person. you would hope that, while -- when he is overthrown, as likely seems the case, the united states will have an influence in the new government if we are aiding and a